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Recently, a viewer shared how my content led them to a book that, though not considered ‘Magick,’ hugely impacted their progress. Inspired by that, I’ll share a few titles that did the same for me in 2024. So, whether you’re an occultist, a self-improver, or a creator, these books can help you start 2025 with fresh perspectives.
This video and other selfimprovement youtubers got me into buying this book, its probably the best non magick book i’ve ever started to read, thank you for bringing me this masterpiece of a book into my attention!
Psycho-Cybernetics
Being the book my viewer regarded, Psycho-Cybernetics needs no introduction. According to many, it’s the original ‘self-improvement science.’ According to me, its practices can complement those of modern occultists.
Also called ‘self-image psychology,’ Psycho-Cybernetics was invented by the plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz. Its key concept is the self-image—a mental blueprint defining your character and personal conception.
All feelings and experiences stay consistent with your self-image, leading to acting like the person you conceive yourself to be. It is like a ‘box’ beyond which you cannot develop.
Psycho-cybernetics is a teleological approach, viewing humans as future-oriented, goal-striving creatures, which, according to science, is our basic nature.
It likens the mind to a servo-mechanism, always pursuing goals. However, this servo mechanism can work equally effectively toward goals of success and failure based on what’s consistent with your self-image.
The key is not attempting changes through overexertion of willpower, as this backfires. It is gradually redefining who you see yourself to be. And if that’s not Magick and Alchemy I don’t know what is.
- Magick because you are expanding beyond and destroying self-limitations, navigating the principles of Chessed and Geburah.
- Alchemy because you melt and reshape metals aka your hard-wired notions.
The Courage To Be Disliked
Teleology and self-perception bring us to The Courage To Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Based on Adlerian Psychology, the book isn’t a typical manual but a conversation between a young man and a philosopher.
Stuck in psychoanalytical (aetiological) dogmas, the first feels lost, but the philosopher reveals that’s optional. Change is always available if we have courage, which Adler considers its prerequisite, whereas its lack thereof is the underlying cause for staying stuck in the past.
Besides success, any change holds the potential for failure, humiliation, and criticism. It’s really not what happened years ago but the uncertainty and avoidance of these that hold us back.
Courage is crucial for reshaping a limiting self-image, which likely keeps you in a comfort zone, holding you back from assuming a lifestyle that suits your purpose.
Individual psychology doesn’t recognize fixed personality types. It posits that we choose ‘lifestyles’, including ‘worldviews.’ It just so happens that sometimes, due to circumstances, we do so poorly.
Supporting such a perspective, studies show that intro- and extraversion are actually biased and cannot be validated through concrete research.
Adler considers individuals the most basic monad of society. He stresses the importance of building horizontal, not vertical, relationships. In that regard, perceiving others as comrades or enemies majorly impacts our life quality.
Individual psychology invites us to never forget we are part of something bigger and seek its voice. A giant community beyond nations and organizations, encompassing nature, planets, and the stars.
“(…) all of us belong to the community of the earth, and the community of the Universe. (…)
It is not a fantasy. It is a fact. The community Adler speaks of goes beyond things we can see, like our households and societies, to include those connections that we cannot see…”
— The Courage to Be Disliked. p.172-173
I don’t know about you, but it reminds me of Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World, such as individuals being stars in Nuit’s body. Especially since the Book of the Law was created in 1904, whereas Adlerian psychology started in 1912.
Seek
After checking it twice in a bookstore on a vacation, I decided not to get this book. Luckily, my girl disagreed.
Written by curiosity expert Scott Shigeoka, Seek refreshes our perspectives on curiosity. Though often limited to intellect, curiosity is a superpower that can be channeled in various ways.
This includes emotional curiosity for improving understanding and social skills. Curiosity has three cardinal directions intersecting with each other:
- Inward, which has to do with our inner worlds — Magickally, think of the Elements, alchemy, and personal level of consciousness.
- Outward or deepening our understanding of others and the world around us — Consider the interpersonal level, planets, and Adlerian psychology’s insights on comrades and enemies.
- Beyond, which implies seeking divinity and self-transcendence — Perhaps think of Zodiac signs.
A key detail is that how you use one informs how you use the others. Using all three deliberately makes you a ‘true seeker.’
To help you become one, the author provides a practical framework called DIVE. This is:
- Detach or let go of your ABCs (or assumptions, biases, and certainty).
- Intend or Prepare your mind and setting.
- Value, aka seeing the dignity of each individual including yourself.
- Embrace the hard times in your life.
DIVE lets you form connections despite differences, understanding and appreciating others.
Additionally, Seek is a book offering incredible cross-referential research through science, culture, indigenous wisdom, and the author’s experiences. As a writer, I find it vastly underrated, so don’t sleep on it.
Flow
Another book that needs no introduction is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow. Subtitled The Psychology of Optimal Experience, it identifies entropy and chaos as the Universe’s default state. Bad things happen not because Nature or the Universe hates you. They do because it’s indifferent.
Flow psychology acknowledges Freud’s discovery of the pressure between primordial urges and societal expectations. However, it distinguishes itself from psychoanalysis, as it doesn’t recognize obeying the pleasure principle and submitting to those as a path to freedom and fulfillment. Instead, it views enjoyment as the key.
It advocates psychic negentropy, or mind order, to eventually reflect in our lives. Occultists can think of this as bringing the godhead down and making the divine law prevail in the kingdom of the shades.
It is investing our attention or psychic energy in Autotelic Experiences. Also called flow states, these are mainly
driven by intrinsic motivation and require two things.
- Skills and mastery;
- Clear-cut goals and regulations.
Such experiences make the ego step back in favor of the autotelic self. The more we enjoy them, the more we increase the complexity of ourselves, reaching new states of being.
Flow states provide structure. They replace hopelessness and boredom with control and purpose. They free us from randomness and service of external goals.
This can result in the sense of uniting with entities, which the author calls ‘the Other,’ while occultists may suggest are egregores (or group minds) of all the people involved in a particular thing. In contrast, Csikszentmihalyi affirms they come from the activity itself, as discussed in my video on Autotelic Experiences.
The Creative Act
Considered the Creativity bible, Rick Rubin’s masterpiece is a book I both read and listened to. And if you’re paying attention, I refer to it a lot.
It views everyone as a creator, emphasizing that creativity is not exclusive to artists. By understanding this, we can design our lives and identities to reflect our purpose.
Rubin grants us the freedom to break free from conventions and come up with our own techniques for expressing ideas. He stresses that by practicing to improve, we are fulfilling our ultimate purposes. More on that is in my video on boosting creativity through the Qabalistic Worlds.
‘By practicing to improve, you are fulfilling your ultimate purpose in the world.’
—Rick Rubin. The Creative Act
The act of creation is a communication between the past, the present, and the future. Yet, a piece is never finished.
“One of the skills an artist develops is the ability to recognize when either they or the work have nothing left to give each other.”
—Rick Rubin. The Creative Act
Rubin stresses that all ideas and inspiration are external. They come from a vast pool of resources available to us. It is what we make out of them that makes us unique. Two Occult concepts this resonates with are:
- The notion that the individual is an expression of the Universal
- The Qabalistic concept is that the higher we go on the Tree of Life, the more we are one.
So it’s really the action we take that makes a change.
Rubin identifies several types of creators. Some pre-plan before starting, others figure out things as they go, letting actions inform ideas and vice versa, and a third group creates without technical skills, using those of someone else or an AI. Let me know to which group you belong.
The Way of The Will
Getting into Western Esotericism, I looked for (readily) applicable information. A source that quickly stood out was David Shoemaker’s Living Thelema podcast and book.
Building on those, The Way of the Will advocates identifying your excesses in the Qabalistic Tree of Life and emphasizing their opposites to achieve balance — an approach invented by Phylis Seckler, the author’s teacher.
Like Rubin, Shoemaker recognizes creativity extends beyond art. He notes that all art involves ‘transmutation of the ineffable into manifest.’
Engagement with superconsciousness or Neshamah increases the directness of creativity. It encourages occultists to pursue particular careers while creatives focus on their crafts.
For the latter, the source of their art is their angel’s voice manifesting not through ceremonies but their actual work.
Art and Magick are identical. Creators fall in love with their vision. Practitioners with goals perfectly aligned with their life purpose.
Last but not least, The Way of the Will stresses that:
- No spiritual practice can make up for a poor lifestyle or actual medical help when that’s needed.
- No medical or spiritual aid can replace a proper lifestyle, diet, and exercise.
As covered in my review of the book, I think this is a healthy reminder many need to hear.
Man’s Search for Meaning
Written in the concentration camps, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning outlines the basics of Logotherapy, an existential analysis centered in teleology. Logotherapy helps people find existential meaning (or reason), which it views as our main driving force.
This meaning cannot be given externally. You must determine it for yourself. In psychoanalysis, you lie on a couch, opening up about things that may be uncomfortable and (somewhat) disturbing. In Logotherapy, you may sit erect, actually hearing such things.
A common approach is asking you:
Why wouldn’t you commit a suicide?
Answering it helps you extract one (or multiple) reasons, forming your life purpose.
“Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a ‘secondary rationalization’ of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must be fulfilled by him and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does he achieve a significance that will satisfy his own will to meaning.”
— Man’s Search of Meaning
The search for meaning (often) generates tension vital for mental health. It is also that tension that fuels the search.
While focused on the future, Logotherapy ascribes a very special function to the past, which is probably my favorite part.
Potentialities are transitory, existing for a limited time. By actualizing, we eternalize them in the past, where nothing is irretrievably lost and everything irrevocably stored. Such a perspective makes us accountable for all our choices and sacrifices.
“Man constantly makes his choice concerning the mass of his present potentialities; which of these will be condemned to nonbeing and which will be actualized? Which choice will be made an actuality once and forever, an immortal ‘footprint in the sands of time?’ At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.”
— Man’s Search of Meaning p.97
Those living recklessly are depressed seeing another day gone. Those living responsibly can look back on a collection of potentialities they actualized. More on that is in my video on Logotherapy.
The Daily Stoic
A real treasure trove, the Daily Stoic has reflection for all days of the year. Under each, Ryan Holiday provides brief explication and fascinating perspectives. While I marked most pages, several concepts really resonated.
Although they didn’t have news and social media, if they were to seek it, Stoics would find plenty of information to disappoint and disturb them. Instead, they deliberately kept themselves ‘ignorant’ of such distractions while constantly reminding themselves they were mortal.
This saved them from meaningless distractions or things beyond their control, letting them focus on purposeful living as they aimed to live each day like it was their last.
While many Stoics deemed luxuries evil, Seneca enjoyed them without fear of losing them.
To me, the Stoics’ biggest power is never focusing on things beyond their control nor letting one misfortune influence other aspects of their lives and spread like a disease. Instead, they ‘isolated’ those, adding as little of an opinion as possible and focusing on what could be done.
The more hardcore stoics cherished all experiences, essentially practicing Nitzshean Amor Fati. This is similar to Thelemites, who adore all events as part of Nuit’s Extasy.
Alternatively, others cultivated indifference. This allowed them to keep inner peace and tranquility, even in hardships. I found the second to be more practical, considering what Flow Psychology taught us about Nature and the Universe. And I’ll be happy to know your thoughts.
Recap
Otherwise, which of these books resonates most with you? Share the titles below. Complimenting each other’s insights, these books helped me massively on my journey as a creator and occultist.
Though I am not sponsored, I firmly believe you won’t regret getting them all and discovering meanings that resonate with you. But that’s just my opinion. Have a blessed 2025. Thank you for your time.
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